


The Cottage, the Storm

by Dragonsquill (dragonsquill)



Series: The Cottage, the Husbands [9]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Affection, Female Crowley (Good Omens), Fluff, Genderfluid Character, Immortality, Mentions of Death, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-04
Updated: 2019-09-04
Packaged: 2020-10-06 20:14:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20512844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dragonsquill/pseuds/Dragonsquill
Summary: Ineffable Husbands Week Day Two: Rain, in the form of more self indulgent South Downs Cottage fluff.  Features a storm, a visiting Warlock, and the realities of immortality.





	The Cottage, the Storm

The humans had named the storm "Tova," and it - she - was living up to her name. Waves crashed against the shore with such force that they could hear them from the cottage's snug master bedroom. Rain lashed the walls and windows, wind slammed into the shutters and moaned around every corner. The lights had gone out and clouds so covered the sun that Crowley lit flickering candles with careful touches of her fingers around the room. "The worst storm of the decade" the weatherperson claimed, and all of the Downs believed it. 

Crowley turned and smiled at the two beings seated cross-legged on the large, comfortable bed. Aziraphale, dressed in a set of pale blue pajamas with clouds and halos (of course Crowley bought them, and they were hilarious every time, which is exactly why her angel wore them in protest), was waxing poetic about the history and development of the name Tova, and its links to the Norse god Thor, to thunder and life. Listening attentively and dressed in black and gray plaid shorts and a vintage Queen t-shirt (also a gift, worth every penny) was Warlock, his long, bare toes wiggling against the feathery softness of the duvet. Aziraphale always had been able to hold the boy's attention with his stories. Crowley was oddly pleased to see it still held true years later (even given the boy's unfortunate fondness for maths over history, literature, or even astronomy). 

A tendril of demonic energy surrounded the house, reinforcing the closed shutters. They were in the bedroom because it had only one window. "Come on, Angel," she purred in Astoreth's careful burr, "tell him the scary ones. We're down to candles and winds...what is it from that old book with the garden."

"'Wutherin' about the 'ouse,'" Aziraphale answered with a wide smile. "I knew you were awake the whole time."

Crowley, properly dressed for a thunderstorm in long, dramatic silk pajamas and robe complete with faux fur, curled up against the headboard. "I thought maybe there was a body hidden in the garden, or at least a crazed wife. Turned out all there was was an extended metaphor."

Warlock laughed. It had taken several days, but he'd relaxed into his visit at the cottage, including such peculiarities as Aziraphale's changed accent and the fact that his former nanny and gardener appeared to only refer to each other by increasingly nauseating nicknames. Even Nanny - Nan now, though she fussed and claimed it made her sound like a goat - who had always acted like love was the path to everything terrible in the world (and therefore everything good? It was beginning to occur to Warlock how incredibly strange his childhood had been under these two's strange tutelage, but he liked it). "Are there scary ones?" he asked. "Myths I mean?"

Crowley smiled and only just stopped herself from reaching out and tucking a lock of Warlock's long hair behind his ear. She'd always been a little afraid of her fondness for the boy - no, more than a little afraid.

Terrified.

He was mortal, and they'd believed he was the antichrist, and he was remarkably normal and human and not fascinating at all, and yet there was a warm spot in her chest just beside the one where her feelings for Aziraphale glowed that belonged to Warlock alone. It was foolish and dangerous, and could only end in pain. Hard enough loving her angel for so long; pure folly to add such fondness for a creature who would live a mere handful of decades, and that only if he was lucky.

She pressed her lips together and sternly shoved the feeling away. She curled tighter as Aziraphale spun a tale of Loki and his serpentine son (she'd always teased him for his fascination with Norse "gods" - what if They got angry? "Pish," the angel would say, "She doesn't mind knowledge," and every time Crowley stared at him and thought of asking too many questions in a time before time), tightening the cold aura of personal space around her. 

Aziraphale, a far-too-accurate description of entrails and dripping poison on his lips, casually reached through the cold and took her hand, lifting it to press a kiss to the thin wrist before continuing to talk, waving their hands together as if it was his alone. Warlock rolled his eyes, but a dimple hid in his cheek, cheekily.

Inconvenient angel, always interrupting when she was building up a good, panicked brood. 

"Wicked!" Warlock declared, and he too shifted just a little bit closer, the hairs on his arms rising at the change in temperature in Crowley's immediate vicinity. 

"Well," Crowley couldn't help but drawl, "he does get free and start off the end of the world, so as always, chaotic neutrality wins in the end."

Warlock grinned. Aziraphale sent her a Look that promised Conversation Later Unless She Could Distract Him. Crowley wasn't worried. Aziraphale was generally too absent minded to remember lectures for later. She shot Warlock a wink just as thunder clapped with such ferocity that the entire house vibrated, and Warlock jumped like he could leave his skin behind. "Shit!"

"Warlock," Aziraphale chided gently, even as Crowley grinned toothily and said, "Shit indeed." Aziraphale heaved a put-upon sigh that had become a part of his repertoire over the last several days. Crowley found she'd missed it; it had been invented around the time of Warlock's eighth birthday, when she'd been teaching him the levels of hell and getting him to practice who would end up where on random passers by. Aziraphale had been horrified, Warlock had found it great fun, and Crowley had never had to work harder to maintain her proper, Nanny demeanor. 

Crowley's watch read 2 am when the storm began to wane and the teenager began to nod. She stood and ushered him to bed with the proper degree of cool professionalism, ignoring his sleepy protestations that he wasn't sleepy and most certainly not feeling all the Warm Feelings of a much smaller Warlock doing the same. She shoved him at the bed and flipped the blanket over him only in the interests of getting him to sleep faster and certainly not as a ridiculous form of tucking someone over 5'9" and growing a few proud facial hairs into bed. 

And she didn't touch his hair, just once, and whisper, "Good night dear."

And she didn't smile when he muttered, "Good night, Nan," and snuggled into the covers like a little boy she'd once-

Crowley escaped into the hallway, a hand over her heart, eyes clenched shut as she collapsed against the wall.

Foolish, foolish, foolish demon. She should never have talked Aziraphale into letting the boy come here. It had been a mistake. An idiotic mistake, more suited to a demon hours old and none one who clocked time by millennia. 

The soft brush and thump of footsteps stopped beside her.

"My love," her angel said, and there were his arms, and she curled into them, burying her face in his neck, collapsing her weight against his. "My darling. Giving love is terrifying, but worth it." His voice was soft, but thick with something like tears. "It will be worth it." 

"It isn't like loving you," Crowley said, the burr gone and a crack of uncertainty in its place. "It isn't the same."

Warm hands stroked her hair, shoulder length now, little tugs that kept her grounded. "No," he agreed. "There is nothing else in the world like you and me." There was laughter in his voice. She pulled away because she had to see his eyes - blue/green/grey and crinkling at the corners. "But love," he told her, thumb tracing the line of her jaw, "comes in many forms, and you, my most beautiful, sly, wonderful serpent, have so much love to give I believe you would burst without giving it."

Crowley scowled. "_Aziraphale_-"

"-Is right," the bastard finished for her. He kissed her cheek, and her ear, and the tip of her sharp nose. He took her cold hands in his warm ones and held them over his own chest, the beating of his corporation's heart. "I'm scared too," he whispered, and she could feel his fear, because she was a demon. "But I know, when the time comes, that you and I will weather it together. Properly. As we should have, all along." 

Because they had both made this mistake before, a thousand times since the beginning, before they learned to stand apart and above these fascinating mortal creatures.

"You promise it will be worth it?" she asked, her voice sharp, a challenge.

Aziraphale nodded, and he shone from within as only an angel making a vow could. "I promise." He lifted her hand and pressed a kiss to the ring finger, a question not yet put into words, but the answer already known.

Crowley sighed. Thunder struck and the windows rattled, and the boy they'd picked by accident slept on. "I'm tired," she said, and her angel smiled. He wrapped an arm around her waist and led her down the short hall to the comfortable bedroom. 

One day, the boy she loved would grow old and die. The girls who invited themselves for tea, and the children in Tadfield, and the witch, and the pragmatist, and Twelve, and Aziraphale's former body-mate and current friend - they would all grow old, and they would die. And Crowley, who knew better, would-

Aziraphale yawned adorably and slipped under the covers without a book in sight. "Come along, darling," he said, and she did, curling in his arms, breathing in his scent (sunshine and tea and warmth). The candles went out at on a gentle angelic breeze. 

She would have this. Still. Forever. Her angel. Their side. Their memories. 

Crowley smiled and tossed a leg over Aziraphale's in a comfortable sprawl. "Full English," she said on a yawn. "For Warlock. In the morning."

"Perhaps a late morning?" he offered. "Given the current time."

"Excellent planning," she agreed, and set about falling asleep in her angel's arms.


End file.
